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Do Alpha Males Deliver Alpha? Facial Width-To-Height Ratio And Hedge Funds, Yan Lu, Melvyn Teo
Do Alpha Males Deliver Alpha? Facial Width-To-Height Ratio And Hedge Funds, Yan Lu, Melvyn Teo
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
An abundance of evidence relates facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) to masculine behaviors in males. We show that hedge funds operated by high-fWHR managers underperform those operated by low-fWHR managers, bear greater downside risk, are more susceptible to fire sales, and fail more often. High-fWHR managers compensate for their underperformance by marketing their funds more aggressively, thereby garnering higher flows and fee revenues. By exploiting major personal events that shape testosterone, namely marriage and fatherhood, we trace the biological mechanism underlying the relation between fWHR and investment performance to circulating testosterone. Our findings are robust and extend to equity mutual funds.
Sensation Seeking And Hedge Funds, Stephen Brown, Yan Lu, Sugata Ray, Song Wee Melvyn Teo
Sensation Seeking And Hedge Funds, Stephen Brown, Yan Lu, Sugata Ray, Song Wee Melvyn Teo
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
We show that motivated by sensation seeking, hedge fund managers who own powerful sports cars take on more investment risk but do not deliver higher returns, resulting in lower Sharpe ratios, information ratios, and alphas. Moreover, sensation-seeking managers trade more frequently, actively, and unconventionally, and prefer lottery-like stocks. We show further that some investors are themselves susceptible to sensation seeking and that sensation-seeking investors fuel the demand for sensation-seeking managers. While investors perceive sensation seekers to be less competent, they do not fully appreciate the superior investment skills of sensation-avoiding fund managers.
Do Alpha Males Deliver Alpha? Facial Structure And Hedge Funds, Yan Lu, Melvyn Teo
Do Alpha Males Deliver Alpha? Facial Structure And Hedge Funds, Yan Lu, Melvyn Teo
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
Facial structure as encapsulated by facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) maps onto masculine behaviors in males and may positively relate to testosterone. We find that high-fWHR hedge fund managers underperform low-fWHR hedge fund managers by 5.83% per year after adjusting for risk. Moreover, funds operated by high-fWHR managers exhibit higher operational risk, suffer from a greater asset-liability mismatch, and are more likely to fail. We trace the underperformance to high-fWHR managers’ preference for lottery-like stocks and reluctance to sell loser stocks. The results are robust to adjustments for sample selection, marital status, sensation seeking, and manager race, and suggest that investors …
Do Hedge Funds Deliver Alpha? A Bayesian And Bootstrap Analysis, Robert Kosowski, Narayan Y. Naik, Melvyn Teo
Do Hedge Funds Deliver Alpha? A Bayesian And Bootstrap Analysis, Robert Kosowski, Narayan Y. Naik, Melvyn Teo
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
Using a robust bootstrap procedure, we find that top hedge fund performance cannot be explained by luck, and that hedge fund performance persists at annual horizons. Moreover, we show that Bayesian measures, which help overcome the short-sample problem inherent in hedge fund returns, lead to superior performance predictability. Relative to sorting on OLS alphas, sorting on Bayesian alphas yields a 5.5 percent per year increase in the alpha of the spread between the top and bottom hedge fund deciles. Our results are robust, and relevant to investors, as they are neither confined to small funds, nor driven by incubation bias, …
Is Stellar Hedge Fund Performance For Real?, Robert Kosowski, Narayan Y. Naik, Melvyn Teo
Is Stellar Hedge Fund Performance For Real?, Robert Kosowski, Narayan Y. Naik, Melvyn Teo
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
We apply a robust bootstrap to evaluate the performance of a large universe of hedge funds. Our bootstrap estimates indicate that the performance of the top hedge funds cannot be attributed to chance alone. This is true even after adjusting for back fill bias, serial correlation, and structural breaks. Also, we find that hedge fund alpha differences persist over three year horizons. However, an investment strategy designed around this will run into difficulties as the persistence is often confined to small funds that are effectively closed to new inflows. Moreover, Bayesian estimates suggest that standard alphas may be overestimated by …